The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #154216   Message #3616294
Posted By: Jack the Sailor
06-Apr-14 - 09:38 PM
Thread Name: BS: I dont understand the word homophobia
Subject: RE: BS: I dont understand the word homophobia
notre ami

Unless your quest is for snooty abuse, I would suggest that this is not the best forum on the English speaking Internet for even mildly controversial political discussions.

I don't know exactly what you mean by News Speak but I don't think you are too far off. Think that the term was created with a political agenda. But then again maybe it is supposed to me a psychiatric diagnosis. It that is the case then it is applied far too widely especially by certain members of this forum. According to the wiki entry at the bottom of this post the word was coined in a book by a person named George Weinberg.

This is what I found when I Googled his name.

Weinberg is known for several major contributions to psychotherapy. He coined the word "homophobia" (in his revolutionary 1972 book, Society and the Healthy Homosexual) to propose that those who harbor prejudice against homosexuals, and not homosexuals themselves, are suffering from a psychological malady, an irrational state of mind. Weinberg, though supposedly heterosexual himself, became a leader in the ultimately successful struggle to have homosexuality removed as a diagnostic category from the DSM, the professional therapeutic handbook. He has been instrumental in shifting public perception of homosexuality.

Weinberg began using the word in 1966 and soon the then minute "homophile movement" began using it. Weinberg next prevailed on a friend, Al Goldstein, who published the underground newspapers, Gay and Screw, to introduce the word. He wrote articles for the underground press himself. He then persuaded a young student, Ken Smith, to do a research study for his masters degree on homophobia, and they designed the questionnaire together. It was the first published scientific study of homophobia.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homophobia

Pronunciation

    IPA(key): /ˌhɒ.məˈfəʊ.bi.ə/, /ˌhəʊ.məˈfəʊ.bi.ə/
    Rhymes: -əʊbiə

Etymology 1

homo (from homosexual) +‎ -phobia, coined in 1971 by George Weinberg in Society and the Healthy Homosexual.
Noun

homophobia (countable and uncountable, plural homophobias)

    Fear, dislike or hate of gays and lesbians.

Synonyms

    (fear of homosexuality): homoerotophobia, heterosexism

Hyponyms

    gayphobia
    lesbophobia

Derived terms

    internalised homophobia

Related terms

    homophobe
    homophobic